Guardian 26,594 / Picaroon

56 comments on “Guardian 26,594 / Picaroon”

1. Thanks Eileen and Picaroon!

   I think the parsing for 4 is A (“one”) + N (“back from Hindustan”) + BOB (“some money”). The order of the N and the A is reversed in the parsing, but I think it works with the “one’s” interpreted has the standard “one has”.

2. Very nice, ta Picaroon and Eileen.

   I thought…

   Back from Hindustan = N

   Plus: “a bob” = some money

   &lit

3. 4d…

   I think the “One” is the definition.

4. Thanks, morphiamonet. It is indeed &lit – sorry, Picaroon!

   I’m off out now to lead a walk, so I’ll deal with any more errors / omissions later this afternoon.

5. I meant to thank Steve, too!

6. Thanks both. Couldn’t parse 10a – got fixated with “lab” as the party and thus failed to see where “lot” came from. Duh!

7. 22 across is PROPOUNDED – the newspaperman is obviously the missing ed

   Yes, a pleasure to see Picaroon regularly in the paper. 14 across is my favourite, I like the running together of different words to form others.

8. Very nice. Couldn’t get RESIGNED for some reason, and couldn’t parse IRIS. Favourites were WUNDERKIND and AWE-INSPIRING. Many thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

9. I agree that this was another enjoyable Picaroon puzzle, although I was another who biffed IRIS. I have no idea how I couldn’t see how it was parsed.

10. Thanks Eileen and Picaroon
    A good puzzle which I found a little lharder than yesterday’s. I too was puzzled by the parsing of nabob though it was an obvious answer. I saw it much as Eileen did, but still don’t like it much, especially among so many other entertainingly and elegantly clever clues.

11. I agree that this was a very satisfying solve. I always feel wonderful when I can solve and parse all the answers.

    My favourites were 14a, 3d, 5d, 18a, 13d, 28a.

    Thanks Eileen and Picaroon.

12. Thanks Picaroon for a challenging puzzle.

    Thanks Eileen for a good blog; you seem to have one too many eses/esses in ODESSA (I assume lines = ODE.) OTTOs bottom was my LOI.

    I thought AGONY UNCLE had an exceptional clue.

13. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

    As a non-UK person I needed help with 1a. And I will not enter into the debate on 4d. I can see where Eileen and others are coming from.

    Without wanting to sound picky, I point out that the answer to 21a is IRIS not IRISH (but the explanation/parsing shows this is just a typo). In 8d the X is left out of the parsing. (sorry Eileen)

    I must admit I was not familiar with Billy Liar.

14. I found this one especially tricky, for some reason. I was convinced that the anti-euro newspaperman was the EXPRESS-ED right until I wrote it in and found myself a letter short…

15. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen. Do hope you you had good weather for your walk Eileen.

    The blog was very helpful, I had not heard of DAVIS the snooker player!

    I did like BIBELOT, AWE-INSPIRING, PROPOUNDED, CONSTRAIN, WUNDERKIND, RESIGNED, BOOM and OTTO.

16. Although BIBELOT is vaguely familiar, I wouldn’t have thought of it without the help of a wordfinder site. Like Shirl @6, I parsed 10a as LAB = party returned and BOX = fight, but then couldn’t explain LOT. I also parsed NABOB as AN (rev) + BOB, but morphiamonet’s parsing @2 makes much more sense.

    Favourites: BLIMPS, LOCUST, WUNDERKIND, BILLY LIAR and AGONY UNCLE.

    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

17. Very little to complain about here. I limit it to H for Hungary, which although backed up in the dictionaries seems very obscure. And ‘newspaperman’: why is that word necessary? It’s weird.

    5D is certainly not &lit as it has a definition, while 13D is. 2D is my favopurite, although I do not think ‘in field’ is really necessary.

    I continue to admire Picaroon, who seems to know what he is doing on the cryptic side.

    HH

18. Cookie @15

    There have been three famous Davises in the snooker world. Steve, the latest, is not related to Fred and Joe Davis, brothers who were both snooker and billiards champions many decades earlier, though Fred’s career did overlap with Steve’s. I remember seeing (on TV) Fred play in the World Snooker Championship in the 1980s, and before that in Pot Black.

19. Hoggy @17, the answer to 22a is meant to be PROPOUNDED, ED for newspaperman, as Lemma @7 has pointed out.

20. jennyk @18, thanks, I can remember in the 1950-60’s snooker was very popular on television, perhaps more so than football as one of my sons points out, but that now the players are so good that a lot of pleasure has gone from watching the game.

21. Another fine crossword following Puck yesterday. Not Picaroon’s most difficult, but maybe familiarity is making them easier. Last in was ADHERE, but only because I had unaccountably written PROPOUNDER and needed to correct that first. Liked AWE INSPIRING, WUNDERKIND, SKIPPING ROPE and AGONY UNCLE.

    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen

22. Thanks to Lemma @7, Robi @12, and Kevin @13: errors / omissions all amended now – careless posting because, as I said, I was rushing out but that’s no excuse. [Very nice walk and good lunch afterwards.]

23. Thanks Eileen and Picaroon

    I really enjoyed this, with enjoyable and witty surfaces throughout – I particularly liked 1 and 26.

    9ac reminded me of a favourite Araucaria clue: “Furious about Peruvian ancestry” (incandescent).

24. Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen. I had no trouble linking Mozart and WUNDERKIND but needed help with the “under K” parsing. I had trouble parsing BIBELOT and took a while to see wine-Wein. Lots of good clues.

25. Delicious crossword – quality wherever you look…and then an Eileen blog to top it off!   :)

26. Well said, Limeni. Good stuff all around.

27. Of course, many thanks Cookie.

28. Thanks all
    I was reluctant to accept adhere as stand by!
    I liked Otto.

29. Yes I agree. Another goodie from Picaroon. Took me a while to see WUNDERKIND but it’s a very good clue. As was BIBELOT which I had to look up, and I agree it is a lovely word.
    Thanks Picaroon.

30. This was most enjoyable and there were some excellent clues – too many for me to pick out! Thank you to Picaroon, and to Eileen for the blog.

    [“Bibelot” is indeed a lovely word; I first came across it many years ago in one of E F Benson’s “Lucia” novels, but haven’t seen or heard it since – more’s the pity!]

31. Struggled with this, so thanks for the explanations.

    Could someone tell me why AC/DC = BI?

    Thanks

32. Alastair @ 31

    AC/DC = swings both ways sexually, so BIsexual

    hth

33. Unlike almost everyone else, I struggled with this today, and had to quit with many to go.

    AC/DC is slang(?) for bisexual, Alastair

34. Thanks Simon and Dave (and glad I wasn’t the only one who struggled, Dave).

    I suppose I knew that connection from AC/DC to BI, but it wouldn’t have occurred to me if I’d thought about it till tomorrow.

35. lovely stuff, how’s the wrist? Phil

36. The flower iris 21 ac is also known as a flag.
    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen. This was fun. Loved 14ac and 1ac.

37. I must admit that recently I became somewhat tired of doing crosswords day in day out – say, three a day.
    Many puzzles have just not so exciting surfaces and are full of the obvious devices.
    I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing but I needed a bit more inspiring stuff.

    Well, today was a day that gave us (at least) two crosswords that tickled my brain again.
    In the FT Loroso, aka Anax, made a welcome (second) return with a gem and at this place Picaroon made once more clear why he is one of the very best.
    So, I feel much better now!

    Not that today’s puzzle was extremely hard but it gave us some 18ac clues.
    3d (WUNDERKIND) probably takes the palm for me, although 1ac, 26ac and 15d came quite close.

    On the other hand, I am not a fan (anymore) of clues like 24d (OTTO).
    And I also didn’t like 20d (ADHERE) very much for some reason.
    But hey, you can’t have it all.

    Altogether great stuff for which thanks to Picaroon.
    Thanks to Eileen too.

    ps1,
    Hedgehoggy, why should H for Hungary be more obscure than D for Germany, or I for Italy, or E for Spain?
    It’s all about what’s on the back of a car.

    ps2,
    Funny to see once more confusion about what an &lit is.
    13d (which I forgot to mention as a favourite) is a full-blooded one.
    However, both 4d and 5d are not because not every word in the clue is part of the wordplay.
    It’s as simple as that.

38. ps3,
    ‘Bibelot’ is indeed a lovely word.
    I was familiar with it because Le Bibelot is the name of a French/Mediterranean restaurant in Utrecht (the town where I lived before I moved to the UK).
    I had a meal there more than once – delicious food.

39. Hi Phil @35 [I’ve been out.]

    Wrist now three weeks out of plaster and getting stronger and less stiff every day, thanks to assiduous following of the exercise sheet I was given. [It’s supposed to take at least six weeks, so I’m doing well, I reckon.] Thanks for asking. x

40. @37
    Actually I would call 4d an &lit. Unlike 5d, which isn’t one, its definition is the whole clue (that, I take it, is the original meaning of & lit. – in addition to the wordplay, the clue literally, as a whole, defines the answer). I also think the correct parsing is to take the whole clue as wordplay, read to mean “one of these [ie the required solution] is (or has) the last letter of Hindustan [n] and an amount of money [a bob]”. Thus every word is both in the cryptic wordplay reading and in the definition – a full & lit. Excluding “one’s” from the wordplay would be illogical, since that would mean you’d have to exclude it from the definition too (it performs the same function in each), so you wouldn’t be able to account for it at all. In fact this structure, beginning the wordplay with “one’s”, “it’s” or similar is very common in &lits – see the azed slip, practically every month.

41. Herb, I see what you mean re 4d.
    Excluding “One’s” from the wordplay feels a bit odd (as it’s also not really a proper definition).
    That said, “one’s back from Hindustan” feels odd too.
    So, dunno.
    Semi-&lit?

    You say that the original meaning of an &lit is that the definition is the whole clue (in addition to the wordplay).
    However, that’s only half the story.
    Every word in the clue must be part of the wordplay.
    And, as I initially took it, “One’s” wasn’t.

42. Herb, I looked again at 4d and I am on your side now.
    Took a few minutes ….. 🙂

43. The term &lit was coined by Ximenes in his notorious tome (the only worthwhile chapter really) and his definition of it is slightly broader than what many assume – ie it includes what some nowadays call semi or partial &lits.

    I don’t think that 5d qualifies in either sense – 4d probably does, depending on how you choose to read it.

    In both cases the clues *can* be resolved as straightforward def|WP clues. What they also have is surfaces which add a great deal. In 5d this is a statement expressing a common sentiment about the ex-PM – but it’s quite independent of the answer.

    For 4d Collins gives for NABOB:

    1: (informal) a rich, powerful, or important man
    2: (formerly) a European who made a fortune in the Orient, esp in India

    For #1 “one” alone will maybe do as a def
    For #2 the whole surface makes the best def

    In case #2 the word “One” is spare in the cryptic reading so it’s an &lit in Ximenes’s terms, but for those who require a “full &lit” to have:

    def = whole surface; WP = whole surface

    it’s a semi/partial &lit.

    It’s amazing how many who proclaim themselves to be ximeneans have obtained their creed secondhand, having not actually read the Sacred Text itself; I suppose that’s common to many religions.

    Both clues have more layers of meaning than what is strictly necessary to derive the answer. Araucaria once said that he liked clues that had “layers” – I think that’s the sort of thing he was referring to.

    ————————————

    All that aside, what a fantastic puzzle – and many thanks for the blog Eileen.

44. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

    Great puzzle from this setter as usual !

    Finished with DAVIS CUP, SKIPPING ROPE and WUNDERKIND as the last few in. Unfortunately drew the error with PADDOCK, where I had PADLOCK – was able to convince myself that it was close enough to pen something up … and that LOCK and ‘clip’ were close enough (even though one was hair and one was wool – maybe mohair from a goat) !!! Made a similar parsing error as Eileen with NABOB and didn’t parse the LYLI part of 5d.

    The rest was all good fun with the clever variety in the clues.

45. Super puzzle

46. JS @43

    A thoroughly good post from your good self.

    However as some previous poster has pointed out it is possible to parse 4D with the wordplay being the whole clue.

    Reading “One’s” as “One has”!

    One’s (a) back from Hindustan (n) with some money (bob)

    The order of the a & n is possibly OK as the “has” perhaps makes the order the readxers choice!

    So it is an &lit (perhaps 😉 )

47. @BNTO

    Your parsing seems to me to be slightly different again from Herb’s. I can definitely buy Herb’s – yours too – although with the other possibilities on offer it’s probably less appealing.

    Herb’s broad point, which I interpret as being that intros such as “that’s”, “it’s”, “we have” etc (which we might sometimes think of as linking words in a regular clue) can validly be thought of as part of the wordplay in justifying an &lit.

    In your version “one” gives A and “has” indicates inclusion without implying an order – so we’re free to reshuffle.

    In both clues there’s a lot going on and more than one way of looking at it all.

48. In other words I’m happy to upgrade 4d to full &lit status.

    I don’t think the setter gets any extra money for that – although I think they should. If they do I’ll be looking for a cut.

49. Not really possible, as A BOB is a far superior result from ‘some money’. The clue is clearly intended to parse as -N with A BOB, and that is not what purists would call &lit, since the ONE’S is additional to the wordplay. What it is, is an ‘extended definition’, the clue type put forward by Peter Biddlecombe recently.

    Otherwise you get from Herb’s ‘full &lit’: A’s N BOB. What is an ANBOB please? 😀

50. I parsed 13 d as a(for ONE)+ n( for can ultimately) + council guy + in trouble(anagrind)

51. Sorry I meant counsel guy plus the a and n

52. Sorry forget it just checked and realised the folly of my ways. Will have to make up a new name for any future bogs

53. Hi Drosscows

    Don’t beat yourself up too much – we all make mistakes! [Come back soon.]

54. Just to clarify (for anyone who’s still confused) my interpretation of Herb’s argument gives the following parsing:

    Def: One’s back from Hindustan with some money

    WP: (I’ll try not to leave out any steps this time)

    Step 1 – Interpret

    One’s: = One is = An example is
    back from Hindustan: (Hindusta)N
    with: with
    some money: A BOB

    Step 2 – Assemble

    An example is (Hindusta)N with A BOB

    Step 3 – Ditch the prunings

    An example is N A BOB

    Step 4 – Eliminate spaces (spaces are never entered in the lights)

    An example is NABOB

    The whole surface being consumed in each of the WP and the def.

    Herb tells us that the inclusion of the lead-in words is supported by regular entries in the Azed slip – in fact it goes right back to Ximenes – (ie his clues rather than his rantings) – whether earlier I can’t say but logic would support its validity.
    ————————————————————
    Anyone interested will find the terms “extended definition” and semi-&lit used synonymously if they follow these two links:

    http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/article1331597.ece
    http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/article1349151.ece

    Of course that only applies in the case where the extended definition runs to the entirety of the clue. In the more general case (where it doesn’t) it excuses the wordplay/def overlap from the accusation of the horrendous sin of double-duty; to do that it needs to extend a shorter (but maybe less precise) def which resolves the clue in the conventional way.

55. Yawn

56. Take no notice, JollySwagman, I love your detailed explanation very much indeed. 🙂

Comments are closed.